


If You Haven't a Dilemma

by theoldgods



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Drawing, Drunk Sex, Drunkenness, First Time, Floor Sex, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oxford, Pre-Canon, Running, Yuleporn, Yuletide, Yuletide 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:06:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the years to come, truth would become nothing but a talking point for an international game, abstracted, picked apart, and lost in their murky double lives. Before something can be broken, however, it must be built—and Bill Haydon and Jim Prideaux began, happily, in a haze of Russian intellectuals and alcohol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Haven't a Dilemma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GloriaMundi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/gifts).



> > _Here the handwriting, till now ill-at-ease, spread out as the writer got into his stride:_
>> 
>> _"He has that heavy quiet that commands. Hard-headed, quite literally. One of those shrewd quiet ones that lead the team without anyone noticing. Fan, you know how hard it is for me to_ act. _You have to remind me all the time, intellectually remind me, that unless I sample life's dangers I shall never know its mysteries. But Jim acts from instinct...he is functional...He's my other half; between us we'd make one marvellous man, except that neither of us can sing. And, Fan, you know that feeling when you just have to go out and find someone new or the world will die on you?"_
>> 
>> _The writing steadied again._  
> 
> 
> This draws on Bill's letter to Fanshawe in chapter 29 of the book, taking what he said was their first meeting as largely true (but perhaps omitting some salacious details). Many thanks to GloriaMundi for prompting a happier time with these two (and for thus dragging me into a renewed few weeks of falling in angst/love with them all over again) and to originally for a lovely Britpick. Any remaining Americanisms are mine, and critique on that point is welcome.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

The Populars were, Jim knew almost immediately, mostly an exercise in self-fulfilling prophecies. Go and learn from their latest project—today a Russian by the name of Khlebnikov—then go out into the world and cheer or argue with one another, attempting a rough sort of pseudo-Communist cachet all the while. (“Argue” was, of course, an athlete’s word, like “scrum”—they preferred “debate,” like most sensible Oxonians.) He could sit at the coffee meet afterwards, pulling at the starchy neck of his shirt and wondering what conversation around him was worth listening to. He could fail to be surprised, at first, by the appearance of a blue-blooded dandy in Daddy’s silks who gave him some affected Russian greeting he caught only the tail end of. 

“Hullo” was all Jim had to offer in reply as he gave Daddy’s Dandy a once-over out of the corner of his eye. Reasonably tall, no remarkable features aside from a few curls in his hair and a wicked smile. His eyes may actually, absurdly, have twinkled, and his lips were certainly pursed. The hand around his coffee cup was long-fingered—and as Jim glanced at it, one finger curled away from the handle to flutter in midair for a heartbeat.

Jim smiled.

“What’s your great dilemma, then?”

 _My dilemma?_ He was here to enjoy the sounds of Oxford, the chatter he might otherwise all too easily ignore. He was not actually here to debate.

“I really have not got one.”

Daddy’s Dandy laughed. “If you haven’t a dilemma, how did you get in?”

“Through the front, the same as most anyone.”

He was attempting to control his face—an act that was not normally a struggle for Jim. And yet he felt the grin spreading across it nonetheless, at how strangely fine-tuned Dandy’s little fingers were, at how his hands caressed the cup, at a picture that flittered in the back of his mind of Dandy rolling his trouser legs to his knees as some scratch cricket team half a century ago waited to take the pitch.

Dandy’s eyes traveled to Jim’s own knees for a moment, and Jim knew that the memory was shared.

“Haydon,” Dandy said eventually, extending his hand. “William.” After a moment’s glance over his shoulder, he added, “Bill.”

“Jim.” _Honest. Blunt. Too much so, surely._ “Prideaux.”

Bill’s eyes were still dancing, a light glitter that Jim found cold and yet heartening, primarily because he suspected it was actually genuine, in a mocking, easy-going way.

“What’s _your_ dilemma, then, Haydon?”

“Bill,” he answered, almost automatically, turning his cup on its saucer without looking down. His eyes found Jim’s and stayed there as a shiver ran up the back of Jim’s neck. “My dilemma is saving the empire.”

Jim, the product of half of Europe and a delirious amount of money that had never quite made its way to him, laughed. “Jolly ho, Your Majesty.”

“I thought you were shy,” Bill remarked, putting cup and saucer on a side table nearby. Color rushed into Jim’s cheeks. “I’ll not make that mistake twice, Prideaux.”

 _Jim_ , he wanted to reply, the same way Bill had. His name stuck in his throat. He swallowed and stood instead. “The Russian looks free, if you want a crack at him.”

Bill, as it turned out, had much to say to jolly Khlebnikov, while Jim stood at his elbow and drank the remains of his coffee in silence. His questions were almost poignant—the kind of smiling, sharp queries that gave you the sense that whilst he found Khlebnikov absurd, he’d listen to the answers anyway. The Russian, Jim suspected, knew this sort of patronizing skepticism well and let Bill ask away until the conversation, such as it was, floundered.

“It is good to meet you, comrades,” Khlebnikov said in parting, with the tiniest of nods in Jim’s direction, before melting into the crowd.

“Sweet _comrade,_ Prideaux?” Bill’s voice was near his ear, and the shivers ran anew down Jim’s spine. “You’ve been holding back on me.”

He shrugged. “I’ve done my time on the Continent, is all. He could probably smell the Czecho on me. I don’t call myself any shade of red, Your Majesty.”

“No reverence for our anointed monarch.” Bill looped his arm through Jim’s, almost casually. “I can teach you respect for our empire, poor boy. Away from the hearth of home, too long amongst frog-eaters and who knows what. There's some nice bottled stout in my room, nicked from my tutor.”

“As long as it’s not too far away—I’ve forgotten my jacket entirely.”

Bill’s grip on him tightened, forcing their shoulders together in a way that failed to be unpleasant. _You are in too deep, Prideaux_ , Jim told himself as Bill steered them toward the door. _This is England, not binational Strasbourg with a sweet garden boy._

Perhaps, what with the constant low sabre-rattling from the Führer and Oxford’s mass of dandy men, it could be safer here anyway.

Despite the chill, Jim extricated himself from Bill for the walk to his rooms, keeping a seemly distance between the two of them. He truly had left his jacket somewhere during the course of his day—the union, maybe, after his meeting there, or the pavilion, or—

“Nothing to fear.”

Bill’s voice was so soft and sudden that Jim’s shoulders tensed in response before he could even absorb the meaning of the words. Wind fluttered their hair.

“ _Whatever_ you want.”

Bill’s eyes were sparkling points in the darkness around them, but his voice wavered. “Do you like a good stout, then?” he continued eventually, at a normal volume.

“Yes.” Jim hated darker beer. He was nonetheless smiling hard enough to crack his mouth wide open. “Oh, yes.”

* * *

 “I haven’t really got much _time_ for Russia,” Bill explained, draining his second bottle and leaning back against a throw pillow, “but they’re all fascinating anyway, those red bastards.”

Jim cared about the Soviets in the sense that he cared that the sun still shone and that Earth did not fall out of orbit. His tongue was coated with bitter ale, his head was spinning too hard for a big man on only two bottles of beer, and a lock of Bill’s hair was falling across his forehead in a most distracting manner. When Bill tossed another bottle his way, only his reflexes saved him from a braining.

“Mmm,” Jim agreed, running his fingers up and down the neck of the new bottle.  “Red indeed.”

“I don’t think you make a bit of sense, Prideaux,” Bill remarked, working the cap off his own bottle as he pushed the wayward curl away from his eyes.

“No.” Jim swallowed another mouthful of beer.

“It’s all right. I’ll talk for both of us.”

“I’m an athlete. We grunt, and I’ve never had an intelligent thought in my head.”

Bill choked with laughter, spewing liquid down his front. “Damn you, Prideaux.” He wiped desultorily at the growing stain on his shirt. “I’ll send you my dry cleaning bill then, shall I?” He stripped off the shirt and tossed it in Jim’s general direction.

“Your father can pick it up for you.” Jim kicked the shirt away from him, lightly, as Bill grumbled.

“You don’t know the first thing about my father.”

“Legalistic aging son of Victoria or some such, sends his son to rule the empire in his place.” Jim shrugged. “Not a difficult deduction, my dear Watson.”

“Elementary.” Bill was removing his shoes now, an action Jim studiously avoided observing for fear that his heart might burst out of his chest. “Can I be Holmes instead? I’ve got the mouth.”

Jim’s stomach twisted. “Watson was the one who did all the writing, yes? I think that’s you.”

“What do you do, then?” Bill’s smirk was magnificent, an aristocratic sneer with a touch of artistry. “Chase balls?”

“Sometimes.” _All the time_. Jim swallowed as he slid his own feet free of his shoes. “I go to my clubs and I do my sport. Sometimes I even attend lectures.”

“You play a sweet empty-headed prole, Prideaux. Too bad you’re petite bourgeoisie, same as me.”

“ _Petite_?” Jim laughed in mock offence. “I say, Haydon, surely we can be _haute_ bourgeoisie?”

“It’s Bill,” he insisted through another mouthful of beer. His hands were trembling on the bottle. When he had swallowed, he continued, “I am an artist. There’s little  _haute_ about that.”

 _Does Daddy know that?_ Jim wondered, scratching at his shirt collar once more.

“What do you paint, then, Monsieur Bill?”

“Lifeless still lifes, abstract blurs.” He dropped his emptied bottle onto the ground before continuing, his gaze fixed on the wall behind Jim. “Naked men.”

 _Definitely not_.

Jim was too lightheaded from alcohol and lust to care. As Bill stared at the wall, he took his chin in both of his hands and kissed him.

“You talk too much.” Bill trembled beneath his touch, his bare chest hot under Jim’s hand. “If I let you—” he kissed him again, a brief brush of lip against lip “—we’d sit here all night yammering.”

To his credit, Bill’s hand went straight to Jim’s cock, trailing his fingers across the fabric of his trousers. “Yes, well,” he murmured as Jim froze. “Sometimes I need a boost.”

Bill’s lips were curiously soft, velvet against Jim’s. For several long heartbeats they sat kissing and breathing, one then the other then back again, as Bill undid the buttons on Jim’s shirt and rocked his hand against Jim’s prick until he squirmed.

“Too cold outside,” Jim muttered, sliding out of his shirt and shifting until their pelvises were better aligned. “’n my pants are shit.”

“Crap sartorial choices, thus rutting like rabbits with no shirts on.” Bill thrust up, dragging his hardening cock alongside Jim’s. “Makes sense—ah!”

Jim had shifted down, pushing them in opposite directions so that Bill’s foreskin pulled in a remarkably unarousing manner.

“Fucking _Christ_ , Prideaux.” He shifted his hips gingerly, realigning them, and traced a circle around one of Jim’s nipples, smiling as it hardened beneath his touch. “Get it together, boy. Sweet virgin fool.”

Franco-German curse words echoed in the back of Jim’s mind, courtesy of that truly proletarian Strasbourgeois with dirt under his fingernails but a good sense for a hand job. He decided against disabusing Bill—who tasted like sweet beer and smelled faintly of cigarettes and library dust—of that notion.

“My name,” he murmured instead, taking a handful of Bill’s arse and shifting up, then down, then up again as they settled into a rhythm, “is Jim.”

Bill’s laugh was thin already. “Nice to...meet you.”

“You should try a good run sometime. Build up your stamina.”

“The sons of….empire...don’t sweat.” Bill wiped a drop of the offending liquid from his face, flicking it onto Jim as casually as one could while getting off with his trousers still on. His head fell back, hair swaying with their motion, and yet one hand still played with Jim’s nipple as the other gripped his arse, anchoring them together.

Jim slid his free hand past the waistband of Bill’s trousers into his pants— _silk, truly bloody silk_ , he realized, choking back a laugh—and dragged his thumb across the head of his cock. Bill’s response was a curse, followed by more as Jim continued to rub.

“Bloody...great... _lunk._ ” Bill was nonetheless smiling as he trailed his hand down Jim’s chest. “ _Beautiful—_ ah!”

Jim’s hand had slipped at the praise. He tilted his own reddening face back, moaning softly as Bill’s hand wrapped around his prick.

“Ah, the beast….stirs!” Bill’s rhythm increased; his lips brushed against Jim’s stubble with a flick of tongue. “Race you.”

Jim’s response was to remove his hand from Bill’s cock entirely and push him against the floor, aligning their pelvises for the third time as Bill, laughing, pulled the throw pillow beneath his head and transferred his hands to Jim’s shoulders. They thrust, hips rolling against one another, for long, breathless minutes, Bill’s hands occasionally straying to Jim’s arse.

“Fucking _statue_ , my god.” Bill’s neck was curved off the floor at an angle that would have silenced any normal human. Despite this mild distress, his eyes still fixed on Jim. “Your _arse_ , Christ, Jim.”

Jim shifted so that the brunt of his weight was focused more directly on Bill’s prick. “That good?” he asked, drawing a hand along the curve of Bill’s throat.

The response was half moan and half groan, vibrating against Jim’s fingers.

“I’ll take your...feedback...into account.” His own breath ran too fast now, and his thighs were beginning to burn. “Ready?”

“ _Bastard_ , yes.”

He brought a hand around both their cocks and felt the lurch of Bill’s body against his as he jerked them together in time with their thrusts.

Bill came first, a minute later, his hips lifting clear off the floor. Jim pressed his face against the sweat pooling on Bill’s chest and released Bill’s prick, doubling his grip on his own as Bill stilled beneath him.

“Good God,” Bill gasped eventually, his voice drifting through the burn of Jim’s focus. A third hand, smooth and slick with sweat, grasped the head of Jim’s cock, and his knees hit the hardwood as he came, covering the head with a hand to avoid soaking Bill beneath him.

Bill’s mouth against his chest eventually roused Jim from his haze. He laid down alongside Bill, groggily wiping them both clean with the nearest fabric at hand, which happened to be Bill's already soiled shirt.

“Sweet of you to clean up,” Bill murmured to his shoulder, laughter vibrating against Jim’s skin. "I think I'll bill my father for that after all."

Jim laid his head on Bill’s stomach and let him stroke his hair, muttering about Russians once more, until they dozed off.

* * *

They awoke sticky in beer and semen. Jim had only been awake for a few moments when Bill’s hands began tracing circles through his hair, raising goose pimples on his scalp.

“I can meow, if you like,” Jim mumbled.

“You’re sharp on your feet first thing, kitty.” Bill’s voice was hoarse but warm, soured breath tickling Jim’s cheek. “I don’t think you purr.”

Jim pulled himself into a sitting position, slowly, threading his fingers through Bill’s as he did so. Outside the window the sky was lightening, a breezy November predawn if the ruffling leaves were anything to go by.

“I can’t purr,” he agreed, looking away from Bill. “I can probably run now, though, if you’re lacking for entertainment. Didn’t get the practice in yesterday.”

“A great ox like you? Of course you can, Hercules.”

“Race you.”

Bill’s face contorted into pain; Jim laughed.

“My head still aches, and I can’t even fuck you without running out of breath.” A naughty light came into his eyes nonetheless. “I’ll watch you whenever.”

“Public indecency is illegal,” Jim remarked, reaching for his shirt.

They made it to the Parks in two whole, if slightly dehydrated, pieces. Jim’s instincts were wobbly—part of him wanted to cling to Bill for all he was worth, another wanted to keep a respectable chummy distance even in the deserted half-light. They ended up close enough to occasionally brush hands.

Bill took a seat on a bench as Jim went into the cricket pavilion to change. As he slipped into his exercise kit, blowing on his hands to warm them in the frosty air, Bill’s knees came to mind once again, muddy from a skewed dive into the grass on that half-remembered scratch team.

Outside Bill was dozing in his seat. This early his mussed hair and stubble looked fragile, a shaggy, unkempt defense mechanism that brought a lump to Jim’s throat before he swallowed it down. Jim dropped a filled water bottle and a stopwatch into his lap and waited for him to stir.

“Where’s yours?” Bill asked eventually, after taking a long drink of the water.

“We’ll share.” He hesitated, then, after a glance around, leaned in to kiss Bill, licking some of the moisture from his lips. “Give me a good suck now—” Bill leered as he passed the bottle over “—and there can be more later.”

“Aye, Your Majesty.” Bill’s smile was sweet enough to kiss again as Jim, water dripping down his front, slid the bottle back into his lap. He fumbled with the stopwatch. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Jim stretched his legs, double-checked his laces. With his face directed at the dirt below him he could say, quietly, “There’s nothing to fear,” and then start off before Bill could reply.

The dirt road was blissfully dust free beneath his feet. The circuits blurred together, long stretches of pitches and trees broken by Bill and his bench. For the first four laps their only interactions were smiles. When Jim came for water after the fifth circuit, the weight of Bill’s glance was heavy, causing him to stumble his way through part of the sixth. At the close of the ninth lap, Jim looked to the bench to see that Bill had brought pencil and paper with him and was writing.

There were twenty circuits in all, Jim’s legs tired enough that it lasted for nearly three hours. Bill offered him water every other lap or so, scribbled his work or whatever it was he had brought, and once blew a kiss that Jim would have sworn set his ears on fire. He walked the last circuit, slowly drawing his heart rate back under control. When he returned to the bench it was to find Bill pacing in the dirt.

“You make me bloody exhausted just watching,” Bill told him, handing over the bottle. “Twenty circuits, Christ. Half a marathon.”

“More,” Jim remarked, taking a drink.

By this point the sun was fully risen; small groups of athletes had been trickling into the pavillion for the last four or five laps. Bill gathered up stopwatch and papers and offered all to Jim.

“Giving me your work to revise, Haydon?” Jim asked in his archest tone, as three stocky blonds passed close by.

“Do I look like an idiot, Prideaux?” Bill pulled his jacket on. “I forgot the time; I’m starving. Jolly good run, though, old boy.” Hands in his pockets, he started off toward the quad, turning to call over his shoulder, “I’ll see you at the next Populars?”

Jim, bewildered, nodded. He unfurled the papers as Bill disappeared.

The first sheet was a series of sketches: a clinical attempt at a tree; two looser, more emotional pieces of a broad-shouldered man with his mouth around a beer bottle. The second was what made Jim smile, heart beating too quickly, as he returned to the pavilion.

> _I think you’re built by the same firm that did Stonehenge._
> 
> _Practice every night would be ideal. Probably not possible, nannies being what they are. We can run dilemmas tonight, though, after clubs. Mine again. If you want._
> 
> ~~_Holmes_ ~~
> 
> _Watson_


End file.
